Remembrance
by peroxidepest17
Summary: Some men drink to forget. Conrad drinks to remember.


**Title: **Remembrance  
**Universe:** Kyou Kara Maou  
**Theme/Topic:** Booze  
**Rating:** PG-13  
**Character/Pairing/s:** lightly ConradxYuuri   
**Warnings/Spoilers:** Um, vague spoilers for Conrad's backstory, I suppose. Probably OOC too.  
**Word Count: **1,059  
**Time: **43 mins (minor edits)  
**Summary:** Some men drink to forget. Conrad drinks to remember.  
**Dedication:** Sherrymarie- Ahaha your request. XD Trying to get me to write PORN? I SEE RIGHT THROUGH YOU. **  
A/N:** Wow this ended up sappier than I'd intended. Well. I guess ConxYuu makes me all mushy and romantic or something.  
**Disclaimer:** Not mine, though I wish constantly.  
**Distribution:** Just lemme know.

Yuuri blinked at Conrad when he came across the tall soldier sitting in the great dining hall alone late one night, bathed in the light of two flickering candles as he gazed out of the window like he was a million miles away. There was a flask in his hand, and every so often he would sip at it, turn it around in his hands.

"You drink?" the young king asked by way of announcing his intrusion, and sounded genuinely surprised. "I didn't know."

Conrad chuckled a bit to himself at the sound of Yuuri's voice— too seasoned to be surprised by the young man's sudden presence, perhaps-- and looked down into the worn, battle-faded flask he was holding. Caught red-handed, it looked like. "Sometimes soldiers need to indulge a little, I suppose," he informed his king good naturedly, and leaned back in his chair.

"Hmmm," Yuuri responded, looking thoughtful. "How does it taste?"

"Awful," the swordsman told him, honestly. "Not very good at all."

"Hmmm," Yuuri echoed, and his brow furrowed a bit. "So why drink it then? The wine is actually quite good here, you know. I mean, so I've heard."

"Oh, I know," Conrad assured the young man with a fond smile. "Gwendal keeps very fine stores." He paused then, and realized he really hadn't answered Yuuri's question at all. "I suppose," he started, and looked at the little tin flask appraisingly, "I drink it because sometimes I just feel the need to remember."

The little wrinkles between Yuuri's eyebrows smoothed out then—realization maybe. His eyes softened instead, and he pulled up a chair next to the veteran, looked at the dingy flask in perhaps, a new light.

Conrad smiled. "It's saved me from infection once or twice," he admitted, and shook it so that the dark liquid inside splashed faithfully against the dented sides. "Maybe despair as well," he added, reluctantly, as if sharing a great and terrible secret with the young man beside him.

He remembered nights in the cold, men sent to fight and die without adequate supplies, soldiers called fodder, traitors, expendable. He remembered that they made due anyway, that they killed and were slaughtered in return for a country that perhaps didn't love them, but that they believed in all the same. He remembered whiskey cakes cooked over open flames and the laughter and stories they used to tell to bolster each other, passing around little tin flasks like this while they huddled side-by-side for warmth near the campfire, enduring through rain, through snow, through hails of arrows and the angry sling of stones. Surviving one story—one flask—at a time.

"Yozak got it for me," he said after a moment lost in his memories, and with something like good humor, offered the tin to Yuuri for a drink. "It really tastes awful."

Yuuri smiled back at that and found himself hoping all over again that everything he did here in Shin Makoku would make it so that Conrad and men like him would only have to take their little whiskey tins out during times when they felt the need to remember. Not because they were cold or bleeding-- not because they were fighting, dying.

Just… to remember.

He was beginning to learn that it was important to keep the past for moments that made him realize things like that, because the past gave him something to learn from. And at the same time, something new to strive towards.

He took the proffered tin after a second, turned it around once in his hand and ran the tip of his thumb over the dents, the dings, the rumpled corners. "What are you remembering, Conrad?" he asked, and wanted to know more—wanted to know everything, if Conrad would tell him.

And then he took a sip.

He ended up coughing most of what he drank back up again, and Conrad was laughing at him then, a strong, steady hand reaching out to pat the young king's back as he tried to regain his breath.

"You're right, that tastes awful," Yuuri croaked when he was able, but was smiling right back at Conrad anyway.

"Gwendal will be furious if he found out I let you have a taste of that," Conrad mused laughingly, and gently took the tin back before tipping it up towards his lips and taking a pull for himself. He didn't cough like Yuuri had though-- swallowed and remembered instead.

Yuuri watched him for a second more, and while the silence wasn't uncomfortable between them, the young king really wanted to know. "Conrad," he started, and reached out again, touched the flask with his fingers but moved them past it, until his hand was resting very slightly atop the other man's, "can I remember with you?"

Conrad looked mildly surprised at the request, perhaps more so than the hand tentatively grasping his own. "They aren't very good memories, heika," he warned, quietly. "Not all of them, anyway."

Yuuri smiled, and whenever Conrad peered into the young man's eyes when they looked just like that, he couldn't help but wonder why Yuuri always worried about being a good king when it was plain to see there had never been a better one.

"Tell me?" Yuuri asked, and curled his fingers just a little bit tighter around the side of Conrad's palm. "I feel like I never know enough."

"There are a lot of stories to tell," Conrad warned him again, and looked at their hands touching on the table top.

Yuuri chuckled. "Well, it'll give me plenty of time to get used to the taste then," he declared, and trained his eyes back onto Conrad's battle worn little flask.

They let the unspoken promise the boy's statement evoked hang untouched in the air between them for a moment longer afterwards, just two hands resting against one another on the wooden table as Conrad held a fistful of memories in his.

And then, after some time, he took a deep breath, and very slowly, began to speak.

"The first night after we'd been deployed, there was an attack on the roadside up through the mountains…"

Yuuri listened to every word.

And while he never did get used to the taste of that whiskey, he thought that he was getting to be pretty damned good at remembering all the same.

**END**


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